


Don’t Go Revenging in My Name

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, just like a whole heap of feelings, post 4x21
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 14:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6857938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 4x21, Felicity tries her best not to get lost in her grief.</p><p>“Please don’t…” She puts ice in her voice in the hopes of freezing him out. “Please don’t try and pretend like you know how this feels.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don’t Go Revenging in My Name

_Title from “[Murder in the City](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRbW08aKDoQ4&t=ZTQ4ODlhYmVmM2Y0MjA0M2IzMTFjODI2OWJlMzI1ODUzNjlkZjc1YSxKT012bGtkYg%3D%3D)” by The Avett Brothers_

**Don’t Go Revenging in My Name**

Felicity’s not surprised that Oliver tracks her down that night, but at the same time, she’s not quite ready to face him. Still, she made the decision to come here. Even if it was just subconsciously, she knew he could find her. Maybe that’s even why she picked in the first place.

“I thought you might be here.” He confirms her thoughts with a soft admission as he takes a seat on the barstool to her left. She’s halfway through her second gin and tonic. He orders a beer in a bottle, though she suspects it’s mostly so his nervous hands can pick at the dampened label.

They sat at the bar their first time here, she remembers. Every other time they’ve come, it’s been a booth, but that first time they hadn’t been sure if it would all be too much.

_“Why is this so important to you?” he had asked warily after they returned to life in Star City, pressing his forehead to hers in one of those moments of stark intimacy that seemed countless when they were together._

_“I just…” She had been struggling to explain herself, wary as she attempted to convince him of something she wasn’t even sure of herself. “We deserved that first date, you know?”_

_“I know.” Oliver’s voice had gone scratchy then, and he had narrowed his eyes at her in a way that made her stomach do a full somersault._

_“We deserved it, and we didn’t even get to have drinks before someone tried to blow us to pieces and now it’s like this specter that hangs over us…” She had been aware that she was babbling, but at least it made him smile a little wider, softening his predatory gaze._

_“Is it?” He asked the question with just the tiniest hint of a tease. That’s how Felicity knew she was wearing him down._

_“Come on, we can sit at the bar,” she tried. “If it’s weird, we can leave, I just want to try. I want to beat this.”_

_“It’s not even an Italian restaurant anymore,” he efforted one last weakened protest. “It’s some crappy theme bar franchise now.”_

_“Please?”_

It was a surprisingly fun night, Felicity remembers. A whole new memory, just what she had been hoping for. They had gone back a few times after that, for a drink, maybe an appetizer that Oliver would pretend to turn his nose up at, and each time they’d leave with stupid smiles on their faces. Flush with liquor and love, tangled up in each other and some strange sense of victory, back before everything went to hell.

This time around, it had been a lie, not an RPG, that blew them to pieces.

“Well my father is staying at the loft, which of course pissed my mother off, even though she’s practically living with Lance,” she tells him tonight when he eyes the hotel key card she’s nervously tapping against the bartop. “And it wasn’t until I was extricating myself from that…situation, that I realized I don’t exactly have access to the Palmer Tech penthouse anymore.”

Nuked a small city and lost her Fortune 500 gig – as well as the access it provided to groundbreaking tech – all in one day. Felicity Smoak has had some improbably bad days, but this one feels literally insurmountable.

“I…” Oliver starts to stammer, though she’s not sure even he knows what he’s trying to offer. It doesn’t matter.

“I don’t _deserve_ to go home,” she says finally, so soft she’s not actually sure if he can hear her. “Not when I destroyed thousands of them. I don’t deserve…”

“ _Felicity_.” Her name pushes its way through his clenched teeth, sounding like a plea.

“Please don’t…” She puts ice in her voice in the hopes of freezing him out. “Please don’t try and pretend like you know how this feels.”  
  
“Probably better than most.” Felicity lets herself accept at least that much is true. Oliver’s also the master of blaming himself whether the situation warrants it or not, but she’s coming for that crown tonight.  
  
“I know you’ve killed people.” Her words come out small. To her own ears, it doesn’t sound like the voice of someone capable of mass destruction. “I know you’ve felt responsible for so much, so many, but this is even bigger.

“You blamed yourself for the Undertaking, and that wasn’t even your fault…”

“And this isn’t yours,” he all but hisses, though Felicity can’t hear anything above the grief that roars in her ears like high tide through a seashell.

“I pushed a few buttons and erased entire family trees, Oliver, I did that.” Her voice breaks on a sob and finally, he touches her, reaching up to take her hand, prying the crumpled bar napkin from her white knuckle grip. “Thousands of people. I could keep doing what we do for years, and it still wouldn’t make up for how many…”

“And what about how many you saved?” he asks when she trails off. 

“That’s what Lyla said,” she recalls, and Oliver nods like that means something.

“Lyla’s ex-military,” he explains. “It’s easier to traffic in net positives when those are the only kind you’ve got.”

Felicity wants to argue that surprise civilian sacrifices and victims of combat are two very different things, but she’s just so exhausted.

“It’s overwhelming,” she continues on a shudder. “I can’t possibly feel for all of them, so it’s almost like… It’s like I can’t feel anything at all.”

“You can’t think like that. You can’t let it pull you under,” Oliver tells her, and his words are still measured, but he’s starting to look a little frantic. “I won't… You can’t lose that light inside of you. You can’t give into the darkness.”

It doesn’t feel like darkness. It doesn’t feel like anything. That’s the worst part. It feels like she could shatter the heavy lowball glass in her hand, let the jagged shards rip their way through muscle and bone, and it would be nothing, just more of the same tumultuous emptiness.

“You’ve had blood on your hands,” she says absently, and he nods at her even as he furrows his brow. “You’ve felt that tangible despair that comes with firsthand guilt, I know you have.”

He nods again.

“This is nothing like that,” she warns, a tremor running through her tone. “I might never have to face a single person who lost someone because of what I did.”

He opens his mouth to protest. She cuts him off. “Failed to do. Whatever.”

It’s a moot point. She’s referred to herself as a hero in the past. Never again.

“But how do you live with this? This _helplessness?_ ” she asks finally, fearing there might not be answer to the question. She hates herself for the contradiction, telling him he has no idea what she’s feeling and asking for his advice in the same breath. Oliver looks at her for a long time, then breaks what’s left of her heart with his answer.

“I don’t live with it,” he grates out. “I don’t live at all, not really. I fight and I work and I strategize… and I _fail_. For almost four years now, that’s how things go. I don’t ever rest, not anymore, and I spend every second missing you…”

She must gasp, because he flinches.

“I couldn’t hold on to the one good thing in my life, Felicity, I can’t possibly tell you how to live.”

She doesn’t speak, she’s barely even breathing as she finishes the last of her drink with her free hand.

“I wish I could ask you to come home with me,” he scratches out after a moment, and she reads the extra meaning behind his words. He doesn’t have a home, not really. He’s sleeping in the bunker, unmoored, just as she was in the unfamiliar sterility of corporate housing. “Tonight. I wish I could give you that.”

“That would be such a bad idea,” she admits, even as her hand tightens around his where they rest on the bar. “I want so badly to feel something, _anything_ , right now, and I…”

Felicity looks at him, expecting his eyes to flicker with heat, but instead they go deep and sad. Unfortunately, it doesn’t diminish her desire to kiss him in the slightest, and she has to physically divert herself to keep from doing something stupid.

“At least let me drive you to the hotel,” Oliver offers, and she knew he would. She’s not just exhausted, but tipsy enough to consider it, despite saying out loud that it’s a bad idea not seconds ago. And it _is_. If she lets herself concentrate on the feeling of the calloused pads of his fingers twined around her own, all the reasons why play out in Technicolor on the backs of her eyelids.

On their way out of the bar, Felicity catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and for a second, she sees a stranger. It’s not just that she’s cried off most of her makeup by this point, but something more fundamental, a sea change she’s felt once before, in an M.I.T. dormitory bathroom waiting for the bleach to set. 

She wonders, for a second, if the most recognizable thing about her right now isn’t the man holding her hand like it’s a lifeline.

His car smells like leather and something else that’s undeniably Oliver, something she’ll never admit to searching for late at night, on the pillows that used to be his. It’s heartbreakingly familiar, just like things have always been between the two of them.

“I probably knew it wouldn’t go away, but I thought it might at least get a little easier.” Felicity passes her forehead to the window as he starts the car, lets her admission fog up the glass. “Everything just fell apart and I’m lost and I’m so  _fucking_ tired. And I just want _you_.”

She hears his breath catch, but doesn’t look over for fear of seeing what kind of reaction it really is. Even still, she can’t seem to help herself. “Every day,” she murmurs, “all I want is you.”

Her eyes fall closed and they must stay that way, because the next thing she knows, Oliver’s lifting her carefully from the passenger’s seat.

He carries her into the hotel lobby and her heart stutters when he clutches her tight in one arm in order to navigate the elevator buttons. It’s almost like the first time they went back to the site of their catastrophic first date, there’s a little bit of healing, a little bit of testing the waters. Felicity almost remembers what it’s like to feel victorious.

She’s all but dozed off when Oliver puts her to bed with a feather-light kiss on the forehead, but the simple touch and the thought of him leaving is enough to jolt her back to consciousness. It may be inevitable, the way this longing burns right through her willpower, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Will you stay?”

When he answers _“Yes”_ even before she’s finished asking, Felicity’s heart does a small, hopeful swoop. When he crawls into his side of the bed and wraps his arms around her, it feels like home.

 


End file.
